One thing I'm glad TCW did with Onderon was that it pretty much retconned the stupid moon thing. The original setup had Onderon with a large moon in a really really low orbit, so close that the planet and the moon somehow shared atmospheres, with an isthmus of atmosphere that the flying beasts could use to move between the planet and moon.

It made my head hurt. So many things were wrong with it. It's an example of the kind of thing that makes me be of the opinion that people should be required to have at least a cursory grasp of orbital mechanics / astrophysics before they sit down to write sci-fi.

One thing I'm glad TCW did with Onderon was that it pretty much retconned the stupid moon thing. The original setup had Onderon with a large moon in a really really low orbit, so close that the planet and the moon somehow shared atmospheres, with an isthmus of atmosphere that the flying beasts could use to move between the planet and moon.

It made my head hurt. So many things were wrong with it. It's an example of the kind of thing that makes me be of the opinion that people should be required to have at least a cursory grasp of orbital mechanics / astrophysics before they sit down to write sci-fi.

My thought exactly. If the satellite is that close to the planet, shouldn't Onderon's gravity well literally pull its moon right onto the planet's surface? Something like this, but not as dramatic:

Then you wouldn't have that moon at all, but a single planet that would gradually reform into a sphere over the course of many millennia.

It's a large moon, perhaps not as big as Earth's, but likely quite a bit larger than the dwarf planet Ceres... And it's sitting there at roughly an LEO altitude.

For starters, a large round moon could not exist that close to the planet's surface, because it is deep inside the Roche Limit. This has even appeared already in SW, albeit renamed the Ambak Limit after the fictional SWU scientist who described it.

Also, the shared atomsphere thing would be fun... even if we assume that the moon is made of solid cast adamantium, and therefore not vulnerable to tidal effects ripping it apart... it's still whipping around every 90 minutes or so at that altitude... I'm talking winds in the multiple 1000s of mph here continually devastating both worlds..

And of course, the friction from the atmospheric interplay would decay Dxun's orbit in short order and it would collide with the planet - its orbit would never be stable for more than a few years, a few decades at most.

Onderon would never have been inhabited by humans, or indeed any organism above the level of bacteria.

It did say it's only "at times" that the atmospheres link- if it was an elliptical orbit with it only spending a short period inside the Roche limit, it could last longer. Not very, though.

Yeah, according to the Wook, Dxun's orbit overlaps Onderon's atmosphere during the summer season, which is admittedly fairly brief, but consider that over the course of millions of years this has been happening, one wonders why the orbit hasn't already decayed to the point where the moon would be dragged into the planet's gravity well permanently. Even if that weren't the case, basic physics indicates that Dxun would gradually lose mass to Onderon's gravity during each close orbit, and eventually it will either fall into the planet or collapse due to tidal forces (if it's not made of material strong enough to resist it) and form a ring around Onderon.

Not to mention, as Valkyrus has noted, during those instances that the planet and moon share an atmosphere, tidal forces and atmospheric conditions would be so violent that multicellular life on Dxun and on Onderon would be virtually impossible to exist, let alone be an inhabitable planet of millions.

In effect, even though I'm no astrophysicist, this really stretches my suspension of disbelief.

It did say it's only "at times" that the atmospheres link- if it was an elliptical orbit with it only spending a short period inside the Roche limit, it could last longer. Not very, though.

No. Still not acceptable. The roche limit for an Earth-sized world is more than twice as far away as the geostationary ring (which is the furthest position that artificial satellites are commonly placed in). But the depiction of Onderon and Dxun shows them at LEO distance apart.

If this orbit were real, Dxun's first periapsis passage would be its first last and only periapsis passage. After which it would become the Rings of Onderon.

This kinda stuff annoys me and takes me out of the story.

I have no problem with all kinds of fancy sci-fi tech doing "impossible" things because you suspend disbelief and imagine that technology has been invented that can do those things. Ships flying faster than the speed of light. Energy swords that cut through anything. You just imagine that that technology has been invented. So that's ok...

I also have no problem with magic/supernatural powers when that is what they are explicitly supposed to be. In the context of SW, this means the Force and all of that.

But when neither of those things are in play - and this is the case for the normal interactions of planets, moons and stars - the assumption is that the ordinary physics that prevail should be the ordinary physics we are familiar with. So it would help to have people writing the stories who actually know how said physics work, or at least have something of an idea of what's plausible and what's just impossible.

Sure. Using the Galactic Standard Calendar, we see there are approximately 368 days in a year, which is 10 months, 3 festival weeks, and 3 holidays in a GFFA year. There are 365 days in a year here on Earth, so it comes out to still be approximately 12 earth months in a SW year. So it's about the same length of time.

And AF, there are actually 35 days in a month in SW, so it's actually slightly longer.

Below that hours, minutes, seconds... but are their hours minutes and seconds the same as ours? Heh, we've never been told I guess.

At the end if we imagined some hypothetical meeting between people from the MW/Earth and the GFFA, standardization of all that stuff would be apt to boil down to some universal constant. Things which should be identical everywhere in the universe, and give you something to build a weights/measures equivalency chart. Like the speed of light in a vacuum. Or the hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen.

At the end if we imagined some hypothetical meeting between people from the MW/Earth and the GFFA, standardization of all that stuff would be apt to boil down to some universal constant. Things which should be identical everywhere in the universe, and give you something to build a weights/measures equivalency chart. Like the speed of light in a vacuum. Or the hyperfine transition of neutral hydrogen.

I've always hoped for a nice, in-depth exploration of Korriban, and once TCW was cancelled, I imagined our only hope for the near future might be the ST (which I would still welcome). And speaking of 'fun stuff,' how about the Valley of the Dark Lords, ancient ruins of Sith temples, Sith spirits and holocrons (basically everything
@Circular_Logic already mentioned)? Ooh, yeah, gimme some of that, please!

I've always hoped for a nice, in-depth exploration of Korriban, and once TCW was cancelled, I imagined our only hope for the near future might be the ST (which I would still welcome). And speaking of 'fun stuff,' how about the Valley of the Dark Lords, ancient ruins of Sith temples, Sith spirits and holocrons (basically everything
@Circular_Logic already mentioned)? Ooh, yeah, gimme some of that, please!

Rebels examining ancient Sith history could only lead to the most massive retcon in the history of Star Wars cannon (well, until Ep VII retcons the Solo twins and entire post-Ep VI EU out of existence anyway). Ancient Sith history in the EU is a jumbled mess.

The idea of Sith holocrons showing up in Rebels is interesting though. Since (Jedi) holocrons made an appearance in TCW there is on-screen precedent for their use. Hopefully Rebels would do better with holocrons than TCW did and actually show someone use one to access its knowledge (instead of using the holocron to read the data on some silly crystal that, conveniently, is the only place they store the names of Force sensitives in the galaxy).

Rebels examining ancient Sith history could only lead to the most massive retcon in the history of Star Wars cannon (well, until Ep VII retcons the Solo twins and entire post-Ep VI EU out of existence anyway). Ancient Sith history in the EU is a jumbled mess.

Why not Rebel jedi since Order 66 is a joke compared to what it once was.

Rebels examining ancient Sith history could only lead to the most massive retcon in the history of Star Wars cannon (well, until Ep VII retcons the Solo twins and entire post-Ep VI EU out of existence anyway). Ancient Sith history in the EU is a jumbled mess.

What I would love to see is Sidious and Vader utilizing ancient Sith holocrons. Sidious inherited a number of holocrons from his Master and I am sure he would be hungry to collect more of these relics, to increase his knowledge and power in the Dark Side. If they decide to show us significant events from the Imperial POV, I can definitely see greater exploration of Sith beliefs and policy. It would be really cool to see one or both of the Sith Lords make a journey to Korriban to explore the tombs of the ancient Sith Lords, like Plagueis did. In fact, that would give us a potential opportunity to actually see a Sith spirit! Recall that Plagueis managed to commune briefly with Marka Ragnos... Finally, I want to see Byss, the planet that served as the Emperor's stronghold during the Imperial era and was a powerful conduit of the Dark Side. There are so many opportunities to delve into Sith lore.

Having a powerful Sith Lord like Sidious rule the galaxy is like opening up a veritable Pandora's box, a bottomless well of evil. We should see the two Sith Lords really put the 'Dark' in Dark Times.

Edit: Perhaps we will get to see a vision of Darth Bane himself if Sidious keeps Bane's holocron:

I'd rather see the one who kicked his ass, plus we've already seen Bane mock Krayt... so I'd have them open up Zannah's holocron where she extolls the virtues of Bane's the Sith being forever... Maybe she retells the story of the battle to overcome her master and that is when Palpatine starts getting delusions of living forever?

I'd rather see the one who kicked his ass, plus we've already seen Bane mock Krayt... so I'd have them open up Zannah's holocron where she extolls the virtues of Bane's the Sith being forever... Maybe she retells the story of the battle to overcome her master and that is when Palpatine starts getting delusions of living forever?

Interesting suggestion there. Are you saying that it was perhaps Darth Zannah who gave Palpatine the idea of utilizing essence transfer to achieve immortality? After all, IIRC, Bane tried to use it to possess his apprentice but was subsequently vanquished.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm not overly familiar with the ancient Sith Lords and neither have I read Legacy (so I can't really comment on Krayt), but either way what I really want is to see Sidious and Vader utilizing these ancient Sith holocrons, which would be an excellent way to reference the extensive Sith EU stories.

Since per TCW, Maul is still running around and now sorta back in the fold as Sidious did not kill him on Mandalore. Maybe they could do an Sith centered arc for Rebels were Sidious is testing Vader by ordering Vader and Maul to recover an artificat on a old sith world.

Since per TCW, Maul is still running around and now sorta back in the fold as Sidious did not kill him on Mandalore. Maybe they could do an Sith centered arc for Rebels were Sidious is testing Vader by ordering Vader and Maul to recover an artificat on a old sith world.

Exactly what I was thinking when I started this thread. I want to see Sidious reflect on how he outdid all those old Sith Lords and Rakata.